ISF Football 2015 WSC Guatemala

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Published on:

06 April 2015

Hello Carlos, why did you choose football? Is this a popular sport in Guatemala as in Brazil ?

It was a project of the General Direction of Physical Education of Guatemala to give school athletes the opportunity to participate and be spectators of worldwide event, also to reinforcing the school sport in Guatemala.

We took the opportunity to organize the 24th World Football School in Guatemala because football is the most popular sport in the country, most of the population (men and women) practice football, they usualy start at a very early age and grow up playing whether for fun or for amateur, semi-professional or professional clubs.

Could you tell us how the ISF Championship is preparing ? Where matches will they take place? How many teams? Countries?

The organization of the 24 World School Football Championship in Guatemala can be considered ready, we are only taking care of some final administrative processes.

115 football matches will be held in 11 courts located in several boroughs of the southwest region of the country in the Departments of Suchitepequez, Retalhuleu and Quetzaltenango. 31 teams from Europe, Asia, Africa and America will be participating in both male and female categories.

Do you have an ambassadeur ? If so, who is it ?

We do not have an official ambassadeur but there have been very popular players that have standed out due to their popularity or their participation playing for international clubs such as our General Director Martín Machón, who played for many year with the National football Team of Guatemala and had been a player for Club Comunicaciones in Guatemala, Angeles Galaxy and Miami Fusion in United States of America, Santos Laguna and Atlas in Mexico. Carlos Ruiz (Galaxy, USA and Puebla, Mexico among others); Dwight Pezzarosi (Argentinos Juniors, Argentina; Palestino, Chile; Racing de Ferrol, Spain; Bolton Wanderers, England and others) he is the current Minister of Culture and Sports of Guatemala; and Marco Pappa (Chicago Fire and Seattle Sounders, USA and SC Heerenveen, Neatherlands). Named as the best Latin American player of 2014 in Major League Soccer MLS.

Is it an advantage to organize a championship to win?

Although being the hosts could make our teams feel more confident we still could not consider it an advantage because in a world level competition the rivals are the best representatives of their countries and they came also to succeed and lift up the name of their country.

And last question, who are the favorites for you?

Since this is an event at a junior level one cannot assume anything, therefore choosing a favorite team is very difficult. We could expect a great performance from the representatives of Turkey (boys) and Finland (girls) who are the defending champions. Traditionally teams like Germany, Brazil and France have had a great participation history in international football championship, so they should be definetly taken in account too. But as I said, since nothing can be assumed we could have pleasant surprises in this festive atmosphere.